GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs GeForce GTX 580

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 580, which comes with clock speeds of 772 MHz on the GPU, and 1002 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 512 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 138 Watts (130%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 134656 (233%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 should be much (about 97%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24352 (97%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24528 (196%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.